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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23132059">I will always find you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/killthecouncil/pseuds/killthecouncil'>killthecouncil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>iKON (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Fate, Fate &amp; Destiny, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Soulmates, avoid if deaths (non-permanent) and bombings trigger you!, b careful pals!, only a bit!, there's also a v mild car accident</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:27:12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23132059</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/killthecouncil/pseuds/killthecouncil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Kim Hanbin has led many lives. He's been alive for thousands of years, approaching one hundred lifetimes, and he knows exactly what the meaning of (his) life is: to find Jiwon, over and over again, no matter what faces or names they happen to have.</p><p>Jiwon doesn't remember their previous lives. Hanbin is okay with that. But sometimes, he wishes he could share the memories with anyone except his ancient diary.</p><p>A birthday gift for my friend and devoted iKONIC!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kim Hanbin | B.I/Kim Jiwon | Bobby</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>70</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>I will always find you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sedra+%28friend-o%27-mine%29">Sedra (friend-o'-mine)</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I wrote this for my friend Sedra's birthday! I was initially planning on something short and sweet, but instead we get this. I think she's the angsty type, though. She doesn't know I've written it as I'm writing this note, but she will soon! Hi, Sedra, if you hate this, it's not on me. I did try. love u.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Life isn’t cyclical, nor is it linear. Hanbin has been alive for thousands of years and he hasn’t ever been reborn in the same place, lived the same life over again. Nor does he feel like he’s going anywhere; he doubts there is a destination, and if it does exist, he can’t see that it wants him there. He’s lived in so many different ways and none seem to draw open the gates to whatever afterlife might expect the rest of humanity.</p><p>He keeps track of the people he’s been: there’s a notebook spilling with names that he’s gotten to claim as his own, places he’s lived, the names of his families and his most memorable experiences. It’s incredibly heavy, a thick tome with over three-hundred pages drowned in ink and graphite and coffee stains and water from that time he dropped it just on the shoreline and one of its corners took damage. It’s not as old as his oldest self (the oldest self he can remember being, if nothing else); he believes he bought it in a stationery shop in the 1880s in London, but perhaps it was Belfast in the 1970s. When his current book sustains so much damage that he’ll have to give up his sentiments and get a new one, he’ll have to copy it all down once more, a pretty century-regular tradition. </p><p>He always makes sure to hide this book in inconspicious, secure places. He never knows when his lives will end- once he died at ninety-seven, another time at eight. If he manages to grow old enough to travel, he visits the scene of his last death to retrieve this book and add his new name, his new place, his new family, and give it its new home. This time around, he- named Hanbin, in this life, but in no others- only managed to do so seven years previously on a family vacation. It’d taken much effort to get his family to agree that Papua New Guinea was an ideal destination, and to, once they got there, journey to a small coastal village under false pretenses (“the beaches are famous”, he’d lied, as he was only really interested in the safe hidden under the floorboards of a remote shack on the outskirts of the village). </p><p>Now, at twenty, the book is perhaps not-quite-securely stashed away in his dorm, but he loathes being away from it. He doesn't think he'll die too soon, but if he does, he hopes his members keep it safe so he can retrieve it from wherever he'd end up. He wonders where that'll be, but there is no way of knowing. Papua New Guinea, Belfast, London, Berlin, Jakarta… Where hasn’t he been? Sometimes it feels like the world will run out of places to show him, but he’s proven wrong every time.</p><p>The book is his most precious belonging. It has all his lifetimes jotted down in it, from before the birth of Christ through 2017, all of his favorite memories color the pages in black, and blue, and grey, and red. There is only one note in green.</p><p>
  <em>His smile is a performance in itself- the bunching of his cheeks, the scrunching of his nose, the peek of bunny teeth. From embarrassed grimaces to crescent-eyed grins, I am endlessly enamored by and captured in the twinkles of his eyes. No matter the body, no matter the smile- whether wrinkles of laughter line his eyes or dimples dot or line his cheeks by the corners of his mouth, the light is the same. His light is constant- it is endless and glows infinitely. Were it not for this light, I do not think I could ever find him. Would I want to? It’s his light that makes him so special to me.</em>
</p><p>Perhaps Hanbin was a bit beyond simply drunk when he wrote that. Really, he’d been drunk, gone to sleep, woken up in the middle of the night with this infatuated paragraph burned into the insides of his eyelids, and mumbled it into his phone as a voice recording before prompty passing out again. And despite the utter embarrassment he felt when replaying it the afternoon after that incident, he’d still forced himself to write it down- no matter how pink his cheeks and tight his chest, he had to preserve this feeling. He had to preserve everything about Jiwon.</p><p>Some people are forced to ponder on the meaning of life- if not as a general concept or entity, then the meaning their own lives should take on or already inherently have. Hanbin pities these people. Despite living countless lives, he knows only one meaning.</p><p>It’s Jiwon.</p><p>Jiwon, or Kaoriki, or Keallach, or Archer, or Leon, or Suhendra… </p><p>It’s always him. Wherever Hanbin has ever lived, so has Jiwon. Hanbin knows that he exists to be with Jiwon, to find him over and over again, to do everything for him, whoever he may be. And no matter the face, no matter the name, Hanbin has always found him. Whether they were seventy or five when he did, Hanbin has <em> always </em> found him. And it’s thanks to the light, a light that isn’t corporeal, isn’t visible, but that radiates out of Jiwon’s chest, and his eyes, and that warms Hanbin faster than anything else ever could.</p><p>But Jiwon doesn’t know this. As far as Hanbin can tell, he has no memories of past lives. But that’s okay. Hanbin will remember for both of them, he always has.</p><p>On page 168 of his notebook, written in tiny font (if he wants to keep his lives contained within a three-hundred-page book, he has to write in tiny letters and in two rows per line), he details his life as a merchant in the 1400s. It’s written in neat Arabic script, since Arabic is the language he originally wrote it in (he doesn’t translate when he copies down old content into new books, so his book would be impossible to read unless you spoke… 86 languages?), and while his Arabic is much worse than it used to be (he hasn’t lived in the Arab region of the world since the 1700s, then his eighth time around), especially without the diacritics that he unfortunately didn’t write it with, he still revisits the memory regularly enough that he doesn’t need his own written account of the incident.</p><p>
  <em>The sun casts a harsh glare upon the city, and the beige stone façades of the buildings surrounding the marketplace gleam with sunlight. Just looking at the side of the nearby mosque leaves Hadi near blinded, and he quickly averts his eyes. Bright spots dance across his field of vision, overlaying the expensive fabrics presented on the rickety wooden table in front of him. All around him, the sounds of bustling and exalted conversations create a sociable, pleasant atmosphere. In the distance, someone is playing an instrument and singing so that it echoes off the walls that narrow the streets. Hadi takes the time to focus on that sound and melody, delighting in the music. This is where Hadi feels most comfortable: behind this table, a respected merchant among the rest of them, unlit lanterns dangling from the poles that hold up the flowing fabrics that shield them from the sun. Hadi sells at the very edge of the town square, so while there is pleasant shadow in front of his table, the sun beats down on his back- he can feel the beads of sweat make their way from his shoulderblade to the small of his back, and he shifts uncomfortably. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Slow down, Jawad!” comes a shout to the left of him. He watches curiously as a young man his own age rushes past, then comes to an abrupt halt that almost tips him over. A woman investigating some dried bouquets, neatly tied up with ribbons, a few stands down eyes the man disapprovingly, and he offers up a sheepish smile.</em>
</p><p><em>Sensation explodes in Hadi’s chest. </em> It’s him. <em> It has to be. Hadi knows it to be true more than he’s ever known anything in this lifetime. This unwavering certainty only overtakes his mind when </em> he <em> first appears in a new life: </em> it’s him, it’s him, it’s him <em> . He’s as beautiful as he ever were. </em></p><p><em>He, Jawad, slowly turns around with that sheepish grin still bunching up his cheeks. But he’s not looking at the younger boy who called for him to stop (who’s since approached, annoyed pinch to his face), he’s looking at Hadi. The smile turns more genuine and he walks up to the array of textiles artfully arranged on Hadi’s table. The only thought that manages to push through the sheer emotion overwhelming him is </em> why am I as affected every time? <em> soon followed by </em> I missed him <em> . He had. He always did.</em></p><p>
  <em>“I like this!” Jawad says with a smile, tugging gently on the corner of a folded-up silk fabric in a strong shade of turquoise. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Imported from China”, Hadi says, ever the salesman. At least this routine is familiar enough to him that he can revert to it when his brain’s melted (and not due to the sun, that’s for certain). “Woven by the best sericulturists in Taiyuan.”</em>
</p><p><em>"I’m sure that’s good, but I’ve never heard of Taiyuan”, Jawad replies with an asymmetrical smile. </em> Oh, that’s endearing. <em> Hadi isn’t very familiar with Taiyuan either- last time he lived in China was during the Liao dynasty several hundred years earlier, he doesn’t know if Taiyuan is the best at sericulture, and he can’t even be completely sure that it’s from there because the importer he purchased it from seemed a bit dubious in character, but the silk is really high-quality either way, he knows that much. </em></p><p>
  <em>And then he realizes that that information somehow managed to leave his mouth while he wasn’t actively trying to keep it shut, too distracted by Jawad’s sunshine eyes, and Jawad is laughing, head thrown back, and the embarrassment feels like more than Hadi can physically handle. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Good on you for being honest!” Jawad manages to get out as he guffaws. Hadi blushes something incredible, he’s sure, but he’s still sunburned from falling asleep outside two days previously so he hopes it doesn’t make a large enough difference to be noticed. “I’ll buy it. What’s it cost?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Hmm?” He’s been distracted again. Curse him.</em>
</p><p><em>“What’s it cost?” Jawad repeats kindly, twinkling gaze searing through him- but can it be searing when it feels so pleasant? It manages to be agonizing at the very same time, so he supposes that it does, but it feels so </em> good <em> , and he’s never been more confused. Perhaps he’s dehydrated and delirious. Surely he must be.</em></p><p>
  <em>Hadi names his price, which happens to be about two-thirds what he’d usually charge, and Jawad doesn’t try to haggle, just hands over the money. The warmth of his hand when it brushes against Hadi’s own sends heat all the way through him, consumes him.</em>
</p><p>
  <em> “I’ll have someone sew a garment for me with this. A shirt, or a nice pair of pants. I can’t sew, we’ll see what it’s good for. I’ll come back and show you!” </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Mmh?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“So you can see what your possibly-Taiyuan-ese high-quality fabric sold to you by a man of dubious character turned into! It’s lived an exciting life, I think we all need closure.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Hadi laughed. “Yeah, okay.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You always here?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I am.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Then we’ll see each other soon.”</em>
</p><p>Hanbin supposes that Jawad died shortly after that, because he never showed up, and Hadi died just ten months later- perhaps some sort of accident, he can’t remember, he didn’t see what killed him. He just knows that, several years later, his five-year-old brain began to understand all over again what he is, and by that point, Jawad was far, far away. This time he was born in a village outside Rome, Aleppo a mere memory. In this life, it took him long to find his soulmate- he was fifty-six, his love perhaps fifty-seven. He spent fifty-six years without him, and that’s after only knowing him for a mere five minutes- discounting that incident, it had been a hundred. It was a cruel century, because usually he gets more time. Sometimes, he gets a lifetime of companionship or love, if he’s lucky. That’s the reason the memory of Jawad is still so vivid: he revisited it often for those fifty-six years before they reunited, now Marcus and Atticus.</p><p>Hanbin turns the page in his notebook and heaves a sigh. He’s feeling nostalgic, clutching the records of former selves in his hands in the early morning.</p><p>There’s a knock on the door, and it jars him out of his hazy, memory-ridden state so abruptly that he flinches, dropping the book to the floor. The door begins to slide open and, in a brief bout of panic, Hanbin slams the book closed and pushes it across the floor to beneath his bed. He winces, imagining the scratches he’s just put on the cover. <em> It’s already pretty banged-up, anyway </em>, Hanbin thinks, remembering the time he fell asleep on the beach in Papua New Guinea- not actually that long ago- and woke up with a book full of sand. He still sleeps uncomfortably sometimes after reading parts of it, grains of sand littering his bedsheets from turning pages he hadn’t touched since that incident. </p><p>“Hanbin-ah”, Jiwon says as he steps into the room. Hanbin’s heart flutters. He really likes the name his current parents gave him, if for no other reason than that it rolls sweetly off Jiwon’s tongue. </p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>“You have to eat, we’re leaving soon.”</p><p>Hanbin jumps up, startled. “What? But I-” he casts a glance to the digital clock on his nightstand and feels like cold water’s getting poured over him when it reads 07:38. “It was six AM just two minutes ago, I swear.”</p><p>“You always swear that”, Jiwon replies with a fond smile. The butterflies in Hanbin’s stomach are doing somersaults. Sometimes Hanbin, when at his most drunk or tired, suspects that Jiwon knows about the butterflies. That perhaps he even caught them, raised them, trained them, and put them in Hanbin’s stomach to respond to his every move. Why else would they be so responsive to Jiwon’s mere presence, his touch, his smile?</p><p>Living a life made up of lifetimes, Hanbin thinks that those butterflies are the only physical constant. In his mind, they are pastel blue, fluttering around in the cavern of his chest, and whenever he dies he loses them, but Jiwon catches them and keeps them and he always puts them back where they belong when they meet for the first time again. </p><p>“-anbin!”</p><p>“Huh?”</p><p>“Are you all right?” Jiwon asks, seeming half-concerned, half-amused. Hanbin shakes his head to clear it, combing a hand through his hair and wondering if he disappeared into his mind again, into these millions of memories that make up an internal world of their own. “Come on, let’s go eat.” Suddenly, a hand clasps his, and Jiwon’s forever-warm palm shocks him with its heat (then again, it always does). Sometimes, when Jiwon touches him, Hanbin begins to wonder if the light <em> is </em> corporeal, after all. </p><p>Jiwon pulls him forward, and Hanbin, in this tired, hazy state, sees memories.</p><p><em>Him, </em> enthusiastically pulling him down a dusty, polluted street in London.</p><p><em>Him </em>, pulling him into the water as sunlight scintillates brilliantly on the surface of the lake.</p><p><em>Him </em>, screaming louder than the ringing in his ears, pulling him away from wherever that explosion came from-</p><p><em>Him </em>, laughing, helping him get up onto the highest branch of the tree.</p><p>Then they’re in the kitchen, and Donghyuk is watching them over a bowl of cereal, spoon clasped in his hand. He nods his ‘good morning’ and grabs a bowl and spoon for himself, filling it with enough to hold him over until lunch, and chews absentmindedly.</p><p>Jiwon falls into the chair next to his own, scrolling casually through his Twitter feed, and Hanbin basks in his sunlight presence. He’d trade the sun for Jiwon, if he had to. <em> He shines just as bright, and just as warm </em> , Hanbin thinks to himself, then blushes. He’s started the day off in memories, in nostalgia and love spanning millennia, and he has a feeling that he’ll be no less sappy at the end of the day than he is now. <em> Love is a hell of a drug </em>.</p><p>Only a little while later, Hanbin’s made quick work of changing and getting his members in enough order (see: getting Yunhyeong to stop despairing over Junhwe apparently believing that the sun and moon are the same celestial body, then trying to knock the thought of <em> they are the same person to me </em> out of his mind before he caused himself to vomit at his own cheesiness) to go down to the van that’ll take them to practice. </p><p>Jiwon sits next to him in the van, tilting his head this way and that. His neck makes a loud popping noise that makes Hanbin wince, and Jiwon laughs in amusement. Jinhwan and Junhwe are arguing in the row in front of them, an unlucky Chanwoo caught between them, and as the car jerks to a stop by a red light, Hanbin finally tunes in to figure out what they’re bickering about.</p><p>“I don’t mind you spending time in my room, I really don’t, but you can’t throw your dirty socks around. It’s gross”, Jinhwan says with weight to his voice.</p><p>“But hyung, you always leave your cereal bowls lying around in the living room”, Junhwe whines.</p><p>“Yeah, but that’s not a private room, is it? It’s not the same. So- FUCK!”</p><p>The car jerks violently to the side, and Jiwon, fast as lightning, grabs a hold of Hanbin and pulls him to his chest, chin pressed to the top of his head. </p><p>
  <em>Belfast has been troubled for long. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s a fact of life on the island that life is not a certainty. While casualties aren’t typically numerous, the sounds of gunshots and detonations and screaming haunt the dreams of most of them, and serve as a constant reminder that peace will not be had and is not to be expected. At any moment, a car, or a trash bin, or any other innocent street adornment might go up in flames, and so might you, and it does things to your mind. </em>
</p><p><em>Cáelán longs for peace, for his mother to stop crying at nights, for his sister to return from a fate there is no returning from. If he could have given her one of his lifetimes, he would have. Perhaps he would have given her all of them, but he doesn’t know how many he has left. And, perhaps, he would have given her none. It’s certainly a burden to bear- this isn’t his first conflict. This isn’t his first war. The world is a cruel place, and he doesn’t know if he should sentence one of its most mistreated victims to another lifetime of potential suffering and anguish. And, if he’s honest to himself, he can’t stop wondering if Keallach and he have the same number of lifetimes. Even if he </em> could <em> give them away, he wouldn’t want to leave Keallach alone as a constant in a constantly changing world- to abandon fate, to throw the meaning of their lives to the gutter. He wonders if that’s selfish. It keeps him awake, sometimes, considering it. Then the sobs of his mother serve as a soundtrack to the misery tainting his mind.</em></p><p>
  <em>Life in Belfast is, of course, not endlessly miserable. There are good days, days where no one dies, sometimes even weeks of calm. The sun still shines, as it does not care for the lives of pesky humans. So does Keallach shine, like the sun, heating Cáelán’s face like the sun does his neck as they rush down the cobblestone streets and laugh, and laugh, and laugh. It’s a sunny, sunny day with not a cloud in the sky, people are roaming the streets and partaking in delightfully inane conversations and feasting on fresh fruits. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Look, Cáelán, strawberries! Let’s get some!” Keallach shouts.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I don’t have any money with me”, Cáelán refutes, but Keallach isn’t discouraged.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I do!” Keallach, who’s just gotten hired part-time at the post office, has been looking for ways to spend his newfound resources. Strawberries, Cáelán supposes, aren’t the worst idea. “Come on, let’s go!” yells the fourteen-year-old, hurrying ahead to the fruit stand just a bit down the road. Cáelán follows, as he is wont to do where Keallach is concerned. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Keallach has already reached the fruit stand, enthustiastically handing over a few coins and reaching for the box of blossom-red strawberries. Cáelán is just crossing the road to join him when the world goes white.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When he comes to, he’s on the ground. It’s not cold, but the part of his body that’s connected with the ground is much cooler than his left side, which feels like it’s burning.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He manages to focus his gaze and sees Keallach right next to him. Sensation returns to his limbs and he feels the frantic tugging on his arm. He groans in response.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“We have to go. Come on, we have to go”, he’s saying. Cáelán struggles to get up, and Keallach helps him get onto his feet. Then he’s being pulled forward, and Keallach is screaming louder than the ringing in his ears, pulling him away from wherever that explosion came from-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Then the world disappears. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>When he comes to, he’s on the ground. So is Keallach, eyes turned to the sky, unmoving. His world, gone. Cáelán knows they’ll meet again, but he can’t help the sob that tears through him, the massive sense of loss that swallows him for a brief moment.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>At Keallach’s funeral, Cáelán does not cry. He knows they’ll see each other again soon. After all, where Keallach goes, Cáelán is always soon to follow. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>In ten months and a day, he too will be reborn.</em>
</p><p>“Hanbin!” Someone’s yelling. Hanbin doesn’t know what’s happening.</p><p>“Hyung!” Okay, more than one person is yelling. And Hanbin still doesn’t know what’s happening. What he does come to realize is that he’s shaking, violently, and someone’s holding him. </p><p>“It’s okay, it’s okay, just breathe, yeah?” a soothing voice urges, and he forces himself to match their inhales. “There you go!”</p><p>“Wha’s happenin’?” Hanbin slurs, pulling out of the embrace. Jiwon looks at him with concern, and he leans back into his chest. </p><p>“Another car drove into us. It had time to slow down but couldn’t completely stop, apparently”, Jinhwan informs him. “No one’s hurt, and the car is only a little damaged.” Hanbin nods slowly, coming back to himself. “Are you okay?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m fine, I just…”</p><p>“You were out for several minutes”, Chanwoo tells him.</p><p>“Oh”, Hanbin says. “Well, I’m fine, it was just a memory.”</p><p>“You were remembering something?” Donghyuk asks skeptically. Hanbin purses his lips and nods, looking down at Jiwon’s lax fist resting on a black-clad thigh. Jiwon smiles softly and combs his fingers through Hanbin’s hair, and he closes his eyes, relaxing into it in the way he only ever allows himself with Jiwon. </p><p>“I’m escorting you to the hospital”, their driver informs them. Hanbin nods, not feeling like arguing. He’s been to many hospitals. On some such occasions they tried to cure him of a diverse array of ailments using blood-letting (which he’s more recently learned isn’t at all a legitimate medical practice, at least not as a treatment of those conditions, and was actually endangering his life, which he’s forever bitter about). </p><p>The car, despite still seemingly operational, is left to the police to deal with as another pulls up to replace it. This time, he’s not allowed a window seat but instead sits sandwiched between Jiwon and Jinhwan, who’s perhaps more worried than he’ll let on about Hanbin’s well-being. God, Hanbin loves Jinhwan. Loves South Korea’s system of respecting your elders and being taken care of in turn. Surrounded by sources of comfort, Hanbin leans on Jiwon’s shoulder and, well, he <em> would have </em> rested a bit if either of them would have allowed him to close his eyes (“you could have a concussion”, Jinhwan argues. “How?” Hanbin questions. He remembers Jiwon protectively pulling him to his chest (and that makes the butterflies very happy indeed). “Just let the doctors check you before you go to sleep, yeah?” Jiwon asks, and Hanbin sighs, relenting).</p><p>The white brightness of the hospital is overwhelming. Hanbin thinks back to the days of the plague, of spending his last days in a shabby, stone-walled building with beak-nosed doctors wearing beak-shaped masks propped full of flowers. He shakes his head, frustrated at his inability to stay in the present. He should’ve slept more, he knows, but he couldn’t. Yesterday was the birthday of someone he used to know and care about, and he only realized a bit past midnight. The guilt and feelings of loss haunted him through the night.</p><p>“You’re good to go”, the nurse says kindly, giving him a quick smile before moving on to her next task. Hanbin stands up, heading over to the rest of his group, who’ve all been given permission to leave as well. </p><p>“I don’t feel like going to practice right now”, Yunhyeong comments. Hanbin shakes his head. </p><p>“I think we should go home.” </p><p>One of their managers had quickly arrived at the hospital to put things back in order, and he readily agrees to let them rest. And thus, they’re back in the car- not the dented one, which Hanbin preferred to this one, it was more spacious if not by much then at least by a little- all a bit more tense about the prospect than they’d been that morning. Hanbin thinks it’s good that they’re getting back into one so soon, lest they develop a fear of it. “The first thing you should do when falling off a horse is get back up again”, one of his mothers had once said to him. He hadn’t, and he hasn’t ridden a horse since.</p><p>Once arriving back at the dorm, they all get comfortable. It’s only been two hours since they left, it’s barely past ten in the morning, but Jinhwan heads off to bed. Donghyuk and Chanwoo get settled on the couch to play Mario Kart, with Junhwe as an audience, and Yunhyeong announces he’s going to take ‘the longest shower’ and disappears.</p><p>That leaves Hanbin and Jiwon. </p><p>“I don’t feel like being alone right now, I think I’m still a bit shaken up”, Jiwon admits. Hanbin nods and leads the way to his own bedroom. </p><p>“I’m gonna do some work, if you don’t mind.”</p><p>Jiwon rolls his eyes. “Ever the hard worker. You know you’re allowed to slow down?”</p><p>Hanbin shrugs. “Nothing to get you going like a car accident.”</p><p>Jiwon cackles loudly and gets seated on the floor, pulling his phone out.</p><p>The sudden barking noise that echoes through the room causes Hanbin to flinch. When he turns around, the likely culprit appears to be Jiwon, who’s staring at his phone and trying hard to breathe. “Look, look at- this!” he gets out, turning the phone to Hanbin. Humoring him, Hanbin watches the video playing on the screen. “It’s not that funny.”</p><p>“It is!” As it loops back around, Jiwon turns the screen to face himself. He snorts loudly, convulsing so dramatically in laughter that he falls over. Hanbin can’t even begin to try to suppress the smile that overcomes his face, and he lets Jiwon see it for just a second or two before he turns back to his laptop with an affectionate eye-roll.</p><p>“I’m too high on adrenaline to be alive right now, look at me, I’m fucking <em> crying </em>”, Jiwon whines breathlessly, and when Hanbin briefly turns to look at him, he is. The laughter’s forced tears down his cheeks, and he’s still grinning as he dries them on his sleeve. With an exhausted sigh, he relaxes, forming a starfish on Hanbin’s wooden floor. It’s getting difficult to focus on responding to emails with Jiwon sending rays of light and warmth through the room just behind him, but he tries nevertheless. He doesn’t even turn around at the suspicious thudding noise he hears not five minutes later, which he’s sort of proud of himself for.</p><p>Then there’s the crisp sound of a page turning, and Hanbin remembers the thudding sound, and this morning, and the fact that Jiwon didn’t bring any sort of book into the room and that the only book in his proximity is the one Hanbin had slid under the bed earlier and- <em> shit. </em></p><p>Spinning around in his chair so quickly that he falls out of it and onto the floor, he looks at Jiwon with wide eyes. Jiwon, who’s sitting with his legs crossed, leaned against the side of the bed. Jiwon, who’s got a very old, thick, leather-bound tome spread across his lap, looking as caught off guard as Hanbin feels. Their eyes meet, and they’re both frozen. Hanbin’s knees hurt something awful from the brutal collision with the floor, but he stays that way, on his knees on the floor, palms pressed to the floor where he caught himself while falling.</p><p>Slowly, Hanbin looks down to see what Jiwon’s seeing, hoping it might be a recent entry and Jiwon will- while probably having figured out that Hanbin is into him- at least only believe it’s a diary. A normal diary. A diary that documents just one lifetime and not ninety.</p><p>It’s in ancient Greek. Hanbin’s read through this book so many times that he knows exactly which lifetime it is, exactly what he’s written, even seeing it upside down. He only has half a page from this lifetime. It might have been the first lifetime where he was literate, and after he’d gone to great pains to both remember the names of his own previous selves and his previous family members and write them down, he’d done the same with the contemporary ones, and written just a few, poorly spelled sentences about Jiwon-then-Alexios.</p><p>“I, uhm…”</p><p>“You remember.” Jiwon speaks in a whisper. The emotion in his eyes is so palpable that it makes Hanbin uncomfortable. When the words finally manage to resonate in his panicked and disoriented brain, all thoughts cease.</p><p>“Wh…”</p><p>“You remember. You <em> remember </em>.” Each time Jiwon says it, it gets louder.</p><p>“<em>You </em> remember?” Hanbin asks.</p><p>“Yes. <em> Yes </em>!”</p><p>Hanbin adamantly shakes his head. “No, but I tried to-”</p><p>“I didn’t think you remembered. I thought you always started over.”</p><p>“I tried to see, but you never-”</p><p>“This is great!”</p><p>“But you never…”</p><p>Jiwon pauses. “I’ve tried to bring it up with you before, but you never… Yeah.”</p><p>“But we both…”</p><p>“We remember!” Jiwon’s grin has never been as bright. Hanbin gasps for air.</p><p>
  <em>The bunching of his cheeks, the scrunching of his nose, the peek of bunny teeth. I am endlessly enamored by and captured in the twinkles of his eyes. His light is constant- it is endless and glows infinitely. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>It’s his light that makes him so special to me.</em>
</p><p>“We’ve been dumbasses this entire time, fuck”, Jiwon says, laughing breathlessly. Hanbin smiles softly and looks down. Jiwon’s hand is gently caressing the pages of his book, and he’s never been more grateful to it- not only has it preserved so many important memories, kept him rooted in reality and in his past, but it’s helped Hanbin find Jiwon in a way that even the light never could. It’s created the <em> future </em>.</p><p>He’s still staring softly at the curve of Jiwon’s fingers, the harshness of his knuckles against the soft skin of the back of his hand. Then, suddenly, that hand is moving. Towards him.</p><p>When Hanbin looks up, it’s because Jiwon’s hand has moved his head. It remains softly cupping his cheek, and despite the fact that Hanbin is breathing (he checked) it doesn’t feel like he’s getting any air. The twinkle in Jiwon’s eyes is near-overwhelming.</p><p>“It’s been so long since… Since we were…”</p><p>Jiwon cuts off, but Hanbin can’t guess his way to what he wants to say. “Hmm?”</p><p>Red suffuses Jiwon’s cheeks in the most delightful blush Hanbin’s ever seen on this reincarnation. “Since we were together.”</p><p>“We’re together right now”, Hanbin says, and then gets it. <em> Oh </em>.</p><p>Jiwon chuckles, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t mean like that.” He tilts his head. “You know, I never stopped loving you.”</p><p>“O-oh”, Hanbin stutters. <em> Is this really happening? </em> Jiwon must have confessed to him at least eight times in their life, but this is real. This carries the potential of forever. Not the limitation of a single lifetime, not the presumption that death starts the whole process all over again, but <em> forever </em> . Hanbin has been alive for thousands of years, but he cannot imagine even a hundred <em> unbroken </em>years of this. Of ever-increasing love, of finding each other in the next life and not going ‘Hello, my name is’ but ‘There you are’. It seems too wonderful to be true.</p><p>“I think we were made to be with each other.”</p><p>“I think so too”, Hanbin admits.</p><p>“But if you don’t want to be with me that way, that’s okay.”</p><p>“How could I not?” Hanbin asks, without thinking. Jiwon grins. </p><p>“So that’s a yes?”</p><p>Hanbin gets more comfortably seated on the floor, just a bit too close to Jiwon to be entirely platonic. Jiwon’s eyes are moving attentively to follow every movement of his body as Hanbin slowly leans in, feeling the heat radiating off of him, <em> his </em> him, his <em> him </em>. And it’s as wonderful as their every first kiss has ever been, and the red string of fate connects this memory to all the others, from kissing Nikomachos on the Greek shoreline, to Xingzong in the battlefield, to Jawad, to Atticus beneath ornate, multi-colored windows depicting beautiful men and women whose glass panes cast patterns of red and green and blue and purple onto Atticus’ skin. Perhaps this kiss is that much sweeter. </p><p>“I will be in love with you for as long as I’m alive”, Jiwon breathes. “No matter who I turn into. No matter who you turn into. I will always love you.”</p><p>Hanbin traces the line of Jiwon’s jaw with his finger. “And I will always find you.”</p>
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